This is, too, the notion of Burdett as expressed in his silly and most nasty, musty aristocratic speech of last session. What, then, is to be done with this _over-produce_? Who is to have it? Is it to go to pensioners, placemen, tax-gatherers, dead-weight people, soldiers, gendarmerie, police-people, and, in short, to whole millions _who do no work at all_? Is this a cause of "national wealth"? Is a nation made _rich_ by taking the food and clothing from those who create them, and giving them to those who do nothing of any use? Aye, but this over-produce may be given to _manufacturers_, and to those who supply the food-raisers with what they want besides food. Oh! but this is merely an _exchange_ of one valuable thing for another valuable thing; it is an exchange of labour in Wiltshire for labour in Lancashire; and, upon the whole, here is no _over-production_. If the produce be exported, it is the same thing: it is an exchange of one sort of labour for another. But _our course_ is, that there is not an exchange; that those who labour, no matter in what way, have a large part of the fruit of their labour taken away, and receive nothing in exchange. If the over-produce of this Valley of Avon were given, by the farmers, to the weavers in Lancashire, to the iron and steel chaps of Warwickshire, and to other makers or sellers of useful things, there would come an abundance of all these useful things into this valley from Lancashire and other parts: but if, as is the case, the over-produce goes to the fund-holders, the dead-weight, the soldiers, the lord and lady and master and miss pensioners and sinecure people; if the over-produce go to them, as a very great part of it does, nothing, not even the parings of one's nails, can come back to the valley in exchange. And, can this operation, then, add to the "national wealth"? It adds to the "wealth" of those who carry on the affairs of state; it fills their pockets, those of their relatives and dependents; it fattens all tax-eaters; but it can give no wealth to the "nation," which means the whole of the people. National Wealth means the Commonwealth or Commonweal; and these mean, the general good, or happiness, of the people, and the safety and honour of the state; and these are not to be secured by robbing those who labour, in order to support a large part of the community in idleness. Devizes is the market-town to which the corn goes from the greater part of this Valley. If, when a wagon-load of wheat goes off in the morning, the wagon came back at night loaded with cloth, salt, or something or other, equal in value to the wheat, except what might be necessary to leave with the shopkeeper as his profit; then, indeed, the people might see the wagon go off without tears in their eyes. But now they see it go to carry away, and to bring next to nothing in return.